But, though still apparently as powerful as ever, and more than ever overbearing, he dared not yet propose to the King a way out of the matrimonial tangle. Going home to Austin Friars from the sitting of Parliament on the 7th June, he told his new colleague, Wriothesley, that the thing that principally troubled him was that the King did not like the Queen, and that his marriage had never been consummated. Wriothesley, whose sympathies were then Catholic, suggested that "some way might be devised for the relief of the King." "Ah!" sighed Cromwell, who knew what such a remedy would mean to him, "but it is a great matter." The next day Wriothesley returned to the subject, and begged Cromwell to devise some means of relief for the King: "for if he remained in this grief and trouble they should all smart for it some day." "Yes," replied Cromwell, "it is true; but it is a great matter." "Marry!" exclaimed Wriothesley, out of patience, "I grant that, but let a remedy be searched for." But Cromwell had no remedy yet but one that would ruin himself, and that he dared not propose, so he shook his head sadly and changed the subject.[205] The repudiation of Anne was, as Cromwell said, a far greater matter than at first sight appeared. The plan to draw into one confederation for the objects of England the German Protestants, the King of Denmark, and the Duke of Cleves, whose seizure of Guelderland had brought him in opposition to the Emperor, was the most threatening that had faced Charles for years. His own city of Ghent was in open revolt, and Francis after all was but a fickle ally. If once more the French King turned from him and made friends with the Turk and the Lutherans, then indeed would the imperial power have cause to tremble and Henry to rejoice. Cromwell had striven hard to cement the Protestant combination; but again and again he had been thwarted by his rivals. The passage of the Six Articles against his wish, although the execution of the Act was suspended at Cromwell's instance, had caused the gravest distrust on the part of Hans Frederick and the Landgrave of Hesse; and if Henry were encouraged to repudiate his German wife, not only would her brother--already in negotiation with the imperial agents for the investiture of Gueldres, and his marriage with the Emperor's niece, the Duchess of Milan--be at once driven into opposition to England, but Hans Frederick and Hesse would also abandon Henry to the tender mercies of his enemies.